sonatina "Kawaii" Sonatina 1st Movement

My 3rd piece and,

my first time writing a piece in sonata form (sonatina). 

Wrote this piece originally as a practice piece to gain some grip in the sonata form.

Some constructive criticism would be appreciated. (I have been composing for 6 months)

You have some nice ideas here! Two points of improvement would be:

1) You have many triads in 2nd inversion (measures 1, 2, 6, 7, 19...) that don't resolve according to any of the 3 conventional resolutions of common-practice harmony.

2) You have some very exposed tenths in the right hand that most hands won't be able to play as clearly as your playback, I'd probably make the playback play them broken for more realism and so that you are sure that you like the broken sound.

Keep on composing!

Thanks for the advice😁

On 5/17/2021 at 2:31 PM, Snake_Cake said:

1) You have many triads in 2nd inversion (measures 1, 2, 6, 7, 19...) that don't resolve according to any of the 3 conventional resolutions of common-practice harmony

You got my attention there, what do you mean? I don't see a problem with those instances, but I'll elaborate why in a second. First, I want to get this out of the way cuz I think it could lead to some misunderstandings.

There are 4 "typical" ways 2nd inversion triads are used:

In the context of a Tonic-Dominant cadence with a 4-6 suspension. In this case the cadence is towards C major, the entire measure would be seen as "dominant," yet anatomically the first beat is 2nd inversion C major. It's only "ignored" due to it being a suspension.

As a passing note (in this case the middle chord would be 2nd inversion G major.) Note how it's also in a non-accentuated beat.

As a consequence of a sequence of inversions within the same chord. Note that as the bass spells out the triad, it will inevitably pass through the 5th.

And finally as a result of a pedal note.

Now, all that being said, I think that if you're only using two voices, there's a lot more room to change up the voice movement without it implying necessarily an inversion. However, this all really depends on how much you want to adhere to typical conventions. You can try different alternatives to using 2nd inversions, see if they sound better to you. There's no hard fast rule for this since there are plenty of exceptions anyway.

10 hours ago, SSC said:

You got my attention there, what do you mean? I don't see a problem with those instances, but I'll elaborate why in a second. First, I want to get this out of the way cuz I think it could lead to some misunderstandings.

 

There are 4 "typical" ways 2nd inversion triads are used:

In the context of a Tonic-Dominant cadence with a 4-6 suspension. In this case the cadence is towards C major, the entire measure would be seen as "dominant," yet anatomically the first beat is 2nd inversion C major. It's only "ignored" due to it being a suspension.

As a passing note (in this case the middle chord would be 2nd inversion G major.) Note how it's also in a non-accentuated beat.

As a consequence of a sequence of inversions within the same chord. Note that as the bass spells out the triad, it will inevitably pass through the 5th.

And finally as a result of a pedal note.

 

Now, all that being said, I think that if you're only using two voices, there's a lot more room to change up the voice movement without it implying necessarily an inversion. However, this all really depends on how much you want to adhere to typical conventions. You can try different alternatives to using 2nd inversions, see if they sound better to you. There's no hard fast rule for this since there are plenty of exceptions anyway.

 

Well, this is a question of semantics I guess. My 3 resolutions were your 1st, 2nd and 4th points. When I say resolution I mean the movement from one chord to a different one, in your 3rd example the underlying chord is the same throughout (C major in root position), there's just some elaboration in terms of arpeggiation that doesn't change the underlying harmony.

29 minutes ago, Snake_Cake said:

When I say resolution I mean the movement from one chord to a different one,

That's just plain'ol voice leading tho. There's no "resolution" in the traditional sense since a 2nd inversion chord doesn't necessarily need to go to any other chord unless you're specifically talking about a dominant 2nd inversion that resolves to a tonic, in which case there are a couple of traditional voice leading options. Semantics matter in this stuff, that's why I'm trying to set things clear.